SEAT AiND NATURE OE GLANDERS. 273 



iiig its nature. To liow many hypotheses, founded upon analogies 

 nriore or less erroneous, has not this point given origin I and what 

 are we to think about a disease whose nature has given rise to so 

 much diversity of opinion ] Let us leave to the accurate observa- 

 tions of minds unbiassed and guided by truth alone the important 

 task of discovering and unveiling to us the veritable, the intimate 

 nature of glanders ; and, while these researches are making, form- 

 ing our opinion from such phenomena as are already within our 

 knowledge, let us be content with viewing the disease as a specific 

 inflaimnation of the pituitary membrane ; acute in its incipient 

 stage, however short that stage may be — chronic in its other stages, 

 possibly so from the beginning ; and, like every other phlegmasia^ 

 susceptible of re-acting upon other organs with which they are 

 connected through sympathy, through reciprocity of relation con- 

 necting one with the other, and rendering them reciprocally de- 

 pendent one upon the other. In the actual state of our knowledge 

 we must not expect to be able to explain what we mean by the in- 

 flammation being specific; in what it differs from other inflam- 

 mations of the same tissue ; why it should be contagious and 

 hitherto prove incurable ; why, as it resembles catarrh at its outset, 

 it does not terminate in the same manner, but, on the contrary, as- 

 sumes specific characters, distinguishing it from coryza, angina, 

 and what is called strangles. When we shall have thoroughly ex- 

 amined and probed this question, when we shall have sufficiently 

 studied all the points bearing upon its unravelment, perhaps we shall 

 find fewer difficulties standing in the way of its solution ; — perhaps 

 we shall discover that glanders does not differ so much as we had 

 imagined from coryza, — perhaps we shall find out that it is nothing 

 more than a modification oi coryza. It may be, that glanders differs 

 from nasal catarrh in nothing beyond its being obstinate and tardy 

 in its progress ; that it is analogous to an habitual and chronic 

 coryza — or nasal gleet — which may, the same as glanders^ entail 

 serious consequences ; may be, in spreading by degrees to the 

 lungs; may be, in giving rise to ulcerations and excrescences upon 

 the pituitary membrane. Besides, do we not know that, in highly- 

 acute coryza, the nasal discharge, especially while it continues 

 clear and Umpid, is acrid to that degree that it irritates and even 



